Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss Of science, and the secrets of the mind: Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more: And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth Should bear a double growth of those rare souls, Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world. She ended here, and beckon'd us the rest Parted; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she Began to address us, and was moving on In gratulation, till as when a boat Tacks, and her slacken'd sail flaps, all her voice Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried, 'My brother!' 'Well, my sister.' 'O,' she said, 'What do you here? and in this dress? and these? Why who are these? a wolf within the fold! A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me! A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin ail!' 'No plot, no plot,' he answer'd. 'Wretched boy, How saw you not the inscription on the gate, LET NO MAN ENTER IN ON pain of deatH?' 'And if I had,' he answer'd, 'who could think The softer Adams of your Academe, O sister, Sirens tho' they be, were such As chanted on the blanching bones of men?' 'You jest ill jesting with edge-tools! I am bound To tell her. O, she has an iron will, An axelike edge unturnable, our Head, The Princess.' 'Well then, Psyche, take my life, And nail me like a weasel on a grange For warning: bury me beside the gate, Here lies a brother by a sister slain, And heard the Lady Psyche.' I struck in: 'Albeit so mask'd, Madam, I love the truth; Receive it; and in me behold the Prince Your countryman, affianced years ago Disrooted, what I am is grafted here. Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe Than in a clapper clapping in a garth, To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be, If more and acted on, what follows? war; Your own work marr'd: for this your Academe, Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass With all fair theories only made to gild A stormless summer.' 'Let the Princess judge Of that,' she said: 'farewell, Sir I shudder at the sequel, but I go.' 'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoin'd, The fifth in line from that old Florian, Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell, My sickness down to happy dreams? are you You were that Psyche, but what are you now?' 'You are that Psyche,' Cyril said, ' for whom I would be that for ever which I seem, A woman, if I might sit beside your feet, And glean your scatter'd sapience.' Then once more, 'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I began, 'That on her bridal morn before she past From all her old companions, when the king Kiss'd her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties Would still be dear beyond the southern hills; That were there any of our people there In want or peril, there was one to hear And help them: look! for such are these and I.' 'Are you that Psyche,' Florian ask'd, 'to whom, In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn Came flying while you sat beside the well? |